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Old 05-26-19, 09:51 AM
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Road Fan
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Originally Posted by The_Joe
Yes, looking for an aero, road bike position.

I also ride an old bike. Late '80s Japanese frame. It's not too small for me but I've got a strange body geometry. I'm 5' 9", mostly torso, so the frame fits me as far as pedal stroke and standover height. Just happens that I need the saddle back for (what I think is) proper fitment.

After having a fine time riding the bike on a trainer and taking a few 50+ mile rides it wasn't bad. Then one day the pain came in and I can't remember if it was before or after I made some adjustments. Yes, I'm the kind of person who is foolish enough to keep making changes. Once the soreness heals I also plan to try tilting the saddle down a bit.
I think I have a similar affliction. I have a few ideas, if you still have your old saddle. One is to do a quantitative comparison between your old saddle and the new one. Put the old one back on the bike, level it, set the height to what you have been using (if you can't reproduce this state of affairs, do the heel on pedal test to set the saddle height to a nearly correct point) and set the saddle as far back as possible. Measure the saddle length to find where the halfway point is, and measure the width at that point. Measure how far back from the middle of the bars it is from the middle of the saddle. Unconventional I know but i just want to compare how the two saddles fit the bike.

Write down all the numbers.

Put the new saddle back on, and do the same thing: level it, set the height, slide it back (staying level), and find the halfway point. As before measure the width at the halfway point, then measure how far back from the middle of the bars it is from the middle of the saddle. Again write down all the numbers.

What I'd be looking for is which of the two saddles can be placed far enough back to correctly locate your sitbones and satisfy your need for weight distribution, wide enough to correctly support your sitbones, and meeting those constraints, is narrow enough at the middle point of the saddle to give you clearance for your hamstrings and whatever else has been pained down there.

Also, you said your old saddle was great until you "continued to adjust it." If you do get it back into its best setup, stop and measure the height, setback from a plumb line through the BB (with a level frame), and measure the saddle uptilt (this will also tell you downtilt, lol!). Probably the best way for this last one is to put the bike on a flat floor, like a kitchen or garage floor, and measure the height of the front of the saddle above the floor and the height of the rear of the saddle above the floor.

This may seem like an unnecessary big production, but you thought enough of the problem to ask, and this process would give me the kind of information I want to be able to narrow down the range of saddle choices. I would probably have eliminated that EC90 in favor of a Brooks, that Selle Italia, a Terry, or a Toupe Gel of suitable width.

Many saddles (or their makers) tell you their width across the widest point. Few of them tell you the width across the middle, the length of the attachment area of the rails, and the location of the attachment area relative to the front or back of the saddle. We have to deal with those issues ourselves.
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